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Y o u a n t h e R A F


Coalition Commitments Lt Col Andrew Purdy from the Directorate of Service Personnel Policy


T


he first hundred days are supposed to be the most important in the life of any new Government. I don’t


know what it was like in 1997 but the change of pace since mid-May this year has been very noticeable.


Working in Whitehall in the middle of Government policy initiatives it is fascinating to see how politics works. Most of my work is with other Government Departments, trying to make changes that will improve the lot of Service families. In their dying days, the last Administration was trying to push through as many of their ideas as possible to get them enshrined in law before the election. Now the ship has changed direction and Departments are having to implement a different doctrine.


Two of the commitments in the Coalition programme for Government lie on my desk:


“We will rebuild the Military Covenant by …..


• exploring the potential for including Service children as part of our proposals for a pupil premium.


• Providing university and further education scholarships for the children of Servicemen and women who have been killed on active duty since 1990.”


The first one, the Service pupil premium, is not a commitment to deliver, only to explore the potential. This additional funding for schools with Service children is something that we have been seeking for some time but it is not ours to deliver. School funding is controlled by the Department for Education and we are working closely with them to try to get this measure accepted.


As part of the Military Covenant, Service personnel, particularly those deploying on operations, should be able to be confident that their children are being appropriately supported. Whilst a Service children’s premium is needed to offset the additional costs incurred by schools in providing the necessary support, the main benefit will stem from enshrining of the principle that these children need additional support. If schools receive extra money for Service children they are more likely to acknowledge their needs and provide that support. DfE will shortly publish a consultation on the distribution of school funding so please make your views known by responding to the consultation.


The second measure, university scholarships for bereaved children, sounds simple however it is a complex minefield for me. Firstly, who will be eligible? The ‘term active duty’ is not one that we use or have defined. Does this mean “on operations”? But what about someone killed in training prior to deploying, surely


they have made just as much sacrifice. Or do we go further to the road traffic accident on the way to work or simply anyone who dies whilst serving in the Regular Armed Forces. What about Reserve personnel? Wherever we draw the line there will always be someone just the wrong side of it feeling aggrieved.


Then there is the matter of how much the scholarship should be. What is it to pay for? Does it mean that all tuition fees are to be paid? But for someone with no family income because the breadwinner has been killed they may still not be able to afford to go to university, so should the scholarship include living costs? Should it be a fixed amount or should it vary according to location? What will the tax implications be for the individual receiving the scholarship? Would we be expected to include travel costs for foreign and commonwealth children coming from overseas? Should we pay for them to attend a university outside the UK?


We are working our way through these questions and many, many more and will produce a scheme based on logical argument in order to deliver this Government undertaking. Inevitably there will be some people who will say that it has not gone far enough and there will be others who will say that it has gone too far, but it will be another small brick with which to build the Military Covenant. 


42


Autumn 2010


www.raf-ff.org.uk


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